From my various readings, I have gotten a better idea of what affects graduation and what does not. Here are some of the more promising variables, and how they might interact, with a brief explanation. These are not all explicitly backed by data, but hopefully I can generate some ideas by listing them out.
1. Continuous Enrollment and Transfers- Adelman has shown that continuous enrollment is a huge predictor for graduation, and that transferring to 4-year schools while getting 10 or more credits from both institutions positively correlates with graduation. So it seems that students having a hard time at one institution should be encouraged to transfer to another one that may match their needs better, rather than take a break of a year or more. But this is not a panacea; Adelman also shows that more schools correlate with lower graduation rates. If a student is transferring from institution to institution aimlessly, it hurts their chances to graduate much more than a break would, Could there be a way to tell if transferring would help or hurt a particular student?
2. Pre-College Factors- Adelman showed that academic resources, an index combining high school curriculum, gpa/class rank, and test scores, is a much better predictor of graduation than socio-economic status (ses), sex, or race. High school curriculum, is an especially strong predictor, as DesJardin et al. showed. This is great, because it is possible to raise curriculum for all. Unfortunately, ses is highly correlated to academic resources, and just because a high school student is in a certain class does not mean they understand the material or that the class is teaching what it is supposed to. How can we provide the academic resources to lower ses students so they can graduate college?
3. Traditional vs Nontraditional Students- Nontraditional students are hard to study; it is unclear how to exactly define what makes a student nontraditional, and these students can be very different from one another. Their main shared trait is that their lives do not revolve around their school or its culture. While traditional students tend to live on or near campus, work part time if at all, have many of their social connections tied to the university, and usually only need to worry about taking care of themselves; nontraditional students tend to commute, often work full time, already have lives established outside the university setting, and often have to take care of others, especially children. While nontraditional students often have higher college gpas, they dropout much more frequently. What is the best way to define a nontraditional student? How are nontraditional students at 4-year institutions different from those at 2-year ones? How should institutions interact with nontraditional students compared to how they interact with traditional students?
4. Academic vs Social Integration- For this relationship, I am mainly relying on a study on how college athletics effects college persistence by Mangold and Adams and a New York Times article by Paul Tough on how University of Texas-Austin is attempting to integrate minority students into the university's culture, both of which I have added on my bibliography page but have not formally summarized. Both seem to agree that student integration can have positive effect on academic integration by providing students emotional support and encouragement and making it clear that students belong at the institution and are capable of graduating. But Mangold and Adams note that "social integration is neither a necessary, nor sufficient condition
for academic integration;" students may have their own support networks outside of the school or may invest too much energy into their social lives to the detriment of their academic performance. This is an interesting issue for me, because it also includes parts of the traditional vs nontraditional dichotomy, how to help lower ses students succeed, and even could include if an influx of foreign students affects social integration. But I could also see it as the hardest to find data for. How much should universities be concerned with non-academic matters, and how can they best improve them?
I am glad to see that you are beginning to pose possible research questions, but let me suggest that you don't do this as one exercise, and in a different exercise do a search for data you will use. That will end up frustrating you as the data won't match the research question you want to look at. So, it is is my view that you need to begin to search for data and formulate research questions from that.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you may want to look at a few different cases of similar schools, for example, 4-year residential public universities, 4-year commuter public universities, and public community colleges. You might then want to look at graduation rates within each group and observe that variation from school to school there, to the extent that you do find such variation. You may then want to ask what explains that? Is it what you've discussed so far in your readings of the other studies, or are some schools better at graduating students (and if so, why?)
You might also want to begin to formulate some ancillary questions like:
(1) Should some people actually not go to college at all, but opt to do so because they don't have other attractive options?
(2) If some people are immature at the time they graduate from high school would they be better off working for a few years before going to college? What does the research say on this.
(3) Can we say anything about when in a student's trajectory the marginal dollar is best spent (to maximize the graduation rate from college). Is it better to spend that additional dollar early or late?
I don't know if you can answer any of these, but they are the sort of questions that arise naturally when you do this type of investigation.
I think looking for data sources should definitely be the next step, thanks for the suggestion.
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